Kay Hooper

Hunting Fear

The first book in the Fear series

PROLOGUE

Five years ago

Sssshhhh. Half consciously, she made the sound out loud. "Sssshhhh." But it was a breath of sound. Less than that. She had to be quiet. He might hear. He might get angry at her. He might change his mind.

She kept herself very still and tried to make herself very small. Don't draw his attention. Don't give him any reason to change his mind.

She'd been lucky so far. Lucky or smart. Because he'd said so, he 'd said she was a good girl and so he wouldn 't hurt her. All she had to do was take the medicine and sleep for a while, and then be still and silent for a little bit when she woke up.

Count to five hundred when you wake up, he'd said. Count slowly. And when she was done-

"-and when you're done, I'll be gone. You can move then. You can take off the blindfold. But not until then, you understand? If you move or make a sound before then, I'll know. And I'll have to hurt you."

It seemed to take forever to count to five hundred, but finally she got there. Hesitated. And counted to six hundred just to be safe. Because she was a good girl.

He'd had her lie down so that her hands were underneath her bottom, her own weight holding them flat and immobile. So he didn't have to tie them, he'd said. She could put her hands underneath her like a good girl or he could tie her up.

He had a gun.

She thought her hands were probably asleep by now, because she felt the medicine had made her sleep a long time. But she was still afraid to try moving, afraid he was somewhere nearby, watching.

"Are-are you there?" she whispered.

Nothing. Just the sound of her own breathing.

She shivered, not for the first time. It was chilly, a little damp. The air she breathed was stale. And in the tiniest corner of her mind, way back in the dark where a terrified little girl crouched, was an idea she didn't even want to think about.

No. Not that.

It wasn't that.

Cautiously, very slowly, she began working her right hand from underneath her. It had gone to sleep, the pins and needles sharp, the sensation as creepy as it always was. She kept her hand alongside her hip and flexed the fingers slowly as the blood returned to them. It made her want to cry or giggle. She worked her left hand free and flexed it as well.

Refusing to admit why she did it, she slid her hands to the tops of her thighs, then up her body, not reaching out, not reaching up naturally. She slid them up herself until she touched the blindfold covering her eyes.

She heard her breath catch in a little sob.

No. It wasn't that.

Because she was a good girl.

She pushed the cloth up her forehead, keeping her eyes closed. She drew a deep breath, trying not to think about how much more stale and thick the air seemed to be.

Finally, she opened her eyes.

Blackness. A dark so total it had weight, substance.

She blinked, turned her head back and forth, but saw nothing more. Just… black.

In the tiniest corner of her mind, that little girl whimpered.

Slowly, fraction of an inch by fraction of an inch, she pushed her hands outward. Her arms were still bent at the elbows when her hands touched something solid. It felt like… wood. She pushed against it. Hard. Harder.

It didn't give at all.

She tried not to panic, but by the time her hands had explored the box in which she lay, the scream was crawling around in the back of her throat. And when the little girl crouching in the tiniest corner of her mind whispered the truth, the scream escaped.

He's buried you alive.

And nobody knows where you are.

"I'm telling you it's no goddamned use." Lieutenant Pete Edgerton had an unusually smooth and gentle voice for a violent-crimes detective, but it was harsh now. And filled with reluctant certainty. "She's gone."

"Show me a body."

"Luke-"

"Until you can show me a body, I am not giving up on that girl." Lucas Jordan's voice was quiet, as it always was, but the intensity lurked, as it always did. And when he turned and left the conference room, it was with the quick, springy step of a man in excellent physical shape who possessed enough energy for at least two other men.

Maybe three.

With a sigh, Edgerton turned to the other detectives scattered about the room and shrugged. "The family hired him, and they have the mayor's backing, so we don't have the authority to call him off."

"I doubt anybody could call him off," Judy Blake said, her tone half admiring and half wondering. "He won't stop looking until he finds Meredith Gilbert. Dead or alive."

Another detective, surveying the stack of files in front of him, shook his head wearily. "Well, whether he's as gifted as they say or not, he's independent and he can concentrate on one case at a time for as long as it takes. We don't have that luxury."

Edgerton nodded. "We've already spent more time than we can afford-and a hell of a lot more manpower-on a single missing-persons case with squat for leads and absolutely no evidence that she was abducted against her will."

"Her family's sure she was," Judy reminded him. "And Luke is sure."

"I know. I'm sure myself, or at least as sure as I can be with a gut feeling." Edgerton shrugged again. "But we've got cases backed up and I've got my orders. The Meredith Gilbert investigation is officially a cold-case file."

"Is that the federal conclusion as well?" Judy asked, brows lifting as she turned her gaze to a tall, dark man who leaned negligently against a filing cabinet in a position that enabled him to watch everyone in the room.

Special Agent Noah Bishop shook his head once. "The official federal conclusion is that there's been no federal crime. No evidence of kidnapping-or anything else that would involve the Bureau. And we weren't asked to officially participate in the investigation." His voice was cool, like his pale gray sentry eyes. He wore a half smile, but the vivid scar twisting down his left cheek made the expression more dangerous than pleasant.

"Then what are you doing here?" the same weary detective asked mildly.

"He's interested in Jordan," Theo Woods said. "That's it, isn't it, Bishop? You came to see the so-called psychic's little dog-and-pony show." The detective was hostile, and it showed, though it was difficult to tell which he despised more-supposed psychics or federal agents.

Matter-of-fact, the agent replied, "I came because there was the possibility of a kidnapping."

"And I guess it's just a coincidence that you've been watching Jordan like a hawk."

With a soft laugh that held no amusement, Bishop said, "There's no such thing as coincidence."

"Then you are interested in him."

"Yes."

"Because he claims to be psychic?"

"Because he is psychic."

"That's bullshit and you know it," Woods said. "If he really was psychic, we would have found that girl by now."

"It doesn't work that way."

"Oh, right, I forgot. Can't just flip a switch and get all the answers."

"No. Unfortunately, not even a genuine and gifted psychic can do that."

"And you'd know."

"Yes. I'd know."

Edgerton, aware both of the simmering frustration in the room and the resentment at least a few of his detectives felt toward the Bureau and its agents, intervened to say calmly, "It's a moot point, at least as far as we're concerned. Like I said, the Gilbert investigation is cold. We move on."

Judy kept her gaze on Bishop. "What about you? Do you move on as well? Go back to Quantico?"